Author Archives: Johanna Tan

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Students are extremely unique. Of course you’re thinking in your head right now, “obviously, Johanna.” Just think about something as simple as where they come from. Some are from another country, underserved, wealthy, a family of educators, a family of entrepreneurs, a family of dreamers, a family of doers, but the common trait that we all have with one another is that students have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to learn more, do more, and be more, especially being in the health profession. To me, this is what makes UCSF so unique. Our diversity allows us to come together day in day out as a team to help generate ideas on how to best reach our local communities.

During Fall quarter all of our registered campus organizations work tirelessly to layout event blueprints for the students, faculty, and local communities for the winter and spring quarters. This blog will specifically talk about our 12th Annual Student National Dental Association Impressions Conference. Twelve years. For twelve years, our UCSF SNDA Chapter has worked to give back to the underserved/ minority communities in the greater bay area by hosting a day in the life of dental students, providing mentorship and valuable resources on their journeys to their dreams.

This past weekend, a total of 140 pre-dental students willingly spent their Saturday participating at this event. In addition to the 140 students that attended, there were also more than 70 dental students that donated their free weekend to volunteer, leaving the pre-dental to dental student ratio at approximately 2:1. This ratio set up opportunities for pre-dental students to learn about the unique and personalized stories of each of the volunteers. It was our hope to give them an impression of their future. SNDA, Hispanic Student Dental Association, and American Education Dental Association, joined forces to provide interview practice, a personal statement workshop, simulation lab experience, and multiple different guest speakers that discussed the many aspects of dentistry in dental school. On top of that, scholarships were also given out to select participants to help contribute to their educational journey.

Thankless jobs really, but absolutely worth it. At the end of the day pre-dents left excited and inspired to pursue their dreams in the dental field!

We all come from different backgrounds and we all have different dreams, but the coolest thing is that we all have one similar goal: to make a change. Again this is a collective effort from multiple different organizations and none of this would have been possible if those before us had not paved the way. Dental school is just the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. It is a time for us to learn all that we can learn; it is a time to be alive, be positive, be active, remember our journey, and pay it forward.

Like our opening speaker, alumni of UCSF, Dr. Muhaimin touched on, never give up or let anyone deter you from what you want because anything is possible if you dream big and work hard at it.

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The national ADEA chapter is growing fast. With the help of established chapters, like UCSF in the Council of Students, Residents, and Fellows, ADEA local chapters have been coming to fruition across multiple dental schools. Forty-eight of the sixty-six US dental schools to be exact. How has this process been stream-lined? By coming together and combining all the successful tips and tricks from all the local chapters into a handy document called a ADEA Chapter Toolkit for Students, Residents and Fellows. This page on the ADEA website is a result of ideations at the Fall and Annual Meetings. The benefit of this website has been priceless as its helped many of the new chapters get a strong foundation, and helped older chapters get new ideas to help promote dental education and ADEA as a whole. UCSF’s local student chapter is one of the longest standing chapters in ADEA. Our contribution into the toolkit has been ample ideas of events that have had successful outcomes and helped our students understand what dental academia looks like and can provide.

What does UCSF plan on doing with this toolkit? We hope to continue to build on it from our local chapter, extrapolate ideas from it, and collaborate more with other local schools to help build camaraderie! With Loma Linda University starting their new chapter, UCLA going into their third year of their chapter, and UOP looking for ways to get more students involved, UCSF has been able to help by being in close proximity and on the same time zone! As of now, one of our mini goals within the local chapter is combining events with our cross town school to give our students a mix of academic taste in the private school and public school setting. We foresee this being a benefit to our students as many of them always have questions about private school and public school environments!

Our local chapter will continue to host events for our students that have had continuous positive feedback in the past. We are also putting all hands on deck in supporting Western University as they are hosting the next West Coast Dental Hack-a-thon that was started by one of our very own here last year at UCSF. This year, we anticipate having a equal number of students from all district 11 schools to attend as well as students from schools in district 9. Our chapter growth and new ideas could not have been possible if we didn’t have our enthusiastic ADEA members attend meetings like Fall and Annual. Our eager students continue to be excited about what’s to come for ADEA and dental academia. What better way to learn and hear about it than from the creators and the backbone of dental education themselves?